A Chess Mystery, From Gabriel García Márquez.

"If there had been a crime, this would be a good clue."

The above quote comes from Gabriel García Márquez' Love in the Time of Cholera, an 1985 classic written in Spanish (El amor en los tiempos del cólera). And as any astute reader knows, such a sentence can only mean that there was indeed a crime, and that the author has indeed given us a clue. 

But this is from the first chapter of Cholera, and that chapter lies (mostly) outside the main narrative of the story. As such that chapter tends not to get much attention: Wikipedia totally ignores it; the New York Times review only tangentially references it; Oprah seems to have entirely misunderstood the novel.

For that reason I can't find anyone who has much interest in the clue, or what it means. For us chess players though... for us, the clue cannot be ignored! Because what is the clue?

A position on a chessboard!

And García Márquez gives us plenty of details about the game. First, it is played by (the fictional) Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, immediately before his suicide. He is playing white, and resigned because he would be checkmated ("defeated", in my translation) in four moves. 

Of course, "white is going to be checkmated in four moves" is descriptive of plenty of chess positions. But what you might not know, is that there was a real chess player, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant (1800-1872).  He has two claims to fame: a consultation loss against Morphy, and a loss to Stauton in an 1843 match. But despite these 'achievements', Saint-Amant was no slouch at the chessboard. 

So García Márquez is telling us, perhaps, that the position comes from one of Saint-Amant's games. And Saint-Amant certainly fits, if we take García Márquez at his word that there was only one man who could have defeated Saint Amour in such a way. But which game did it come from? Luckily Saint-Amant only has 69 recorded (non-consultation) games, and we can quickly narrow our search...

Eleven games is a manageable number! And here they are: 

All those games are interesting in their own right, but one sticks out like a sore thumb. Here is our man Saint-Amant, resigning as white exactly four moves from defeat:

There are two important features of this position: Both lines to delay the loss (40. Qh5 Qxh5 41. Kf1 Qxd1# and 40. Qxe3 fxe3 41. g3 Qh1#) involve the sacrifice of white's queen, and in both lines the black queen is the one to deliver checkmate.

What does this clue tell us? First, Saint Amour would rather resign than sacrifice his queen. In the context of the book, we can understand this as him not wanting to give up his secret 'love'. Second, the checkmate is delivered by a black woman- who the reader meets very soon after, and seems to have been extorting Saint Amour to keep his secret (I won't go into details; the book is too good to ruin!).

So! There you have it. The position on the chessboard comes from the fifth game of Saint-Amant-Stauton 1843. Sadly, it doesn't tell us anything that wasn't otherwise made clear in the book. But it was still a fun thing to find out!

Thanks for reading! You should also read everything Gabriel García Márquez ever wrote, because his writing is much better than my blog.